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Talk:Time-viewer
Relevant time-viewer characters Regarding the increasingly draconian policy of weeding out irrelevant historical figures, I'm thinking that most of the time-viewer referenced historical figures are irrelevant. Most boil down to "A famous and/or sexy historical event involving this person was a popular time-viewer video." Exceptions should be made for characters such as Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, whose lives are revealed to be different than the conventionally accepted biographies. Also JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald should be kept, because the confirmation that Oswald was indeed the shooter (even though most people already believed it) is another example of the TV being historically useful rather than voyeuristic. Catherine II of Russia is IMHO not significant enough to keep, because only crackheads believed that stupid horse story in the first place.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:52, July 25, 2016 (UTC) :Where's the interrelationship here? None of these has come up yet. And if you find the policy so draconian, why are you so eagerly jumping out ahead on it? Or is this really an act of sabotage. :Anyway, those of us who actually get a vote on these things will decide each of these cases in our own good time. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:14, July 25, 2016 (UTC) ::Jonathan does get the right to express an opinion on changes even if he doesn't have a final vote on it. :::Of course, but this is extremely disruptive. Especially since TR wanted to pause to make sure we resolve any controversies on the candidates already identified, and don't lose track of them. Jonathan's jumping the gun, especially in such a random and haphazard fashion, all but guarantees someone slipping through the cracks. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:28, July 25, 2016 (UTC) ::As for jumping out of order, we can take his views into consideration when we get to the particular person. Although, in this case he is expressing a view on a criteria for a group of historicals from a particular story much like the debate on the three defeated presidential candidates in LatA. ML4E (talk) 16:45, July 25, 2016 (UTC) Delete or Not For Real Since I've just arrived at Catherine the Great: I think that we should keep the time-viewer entries. While BtB is not exclusively about modern people satisfying prurient interest with the time viewer, these various bits of prurient interest are fairly important to understanding just what the time-viewer is. They also provide that extra bit of satire. TR (talk) 19:03, July 26, 2016 (UTC) :They add quite a lot of color too. As with, for instance, the Detinan puns, not addressing them could drain a story of its wit. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:49, July 26, 2016 (UTC) ::It might be sufficient to list all the named people and their actions (and debunked myths such as Catherine's horse) in a paragraph in the time-viewer article, with links to References to Historical Figures in Turtledove's Work for each person. That's essentially how it's done in the story itself; it just lists all the relevant people and events in barely two pages (out of a story which is something like 16 pages), sometimes pretty oblique but obvious to anyone with any sense of history.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:12, July 26, 2016 (UTC) ::I just had another thought, building on the previous one. There could be a "List of Known Time-viewer Videos" similar to "List of Wars in Disunited States," Provinces of the NAU, the list of known alternates, lists of countries known to be part of the Greater German Reich, Race Colonies on Tosev 3, and the lists of notable members of fictional political parties or holders of fictional offices. This could be part of the main time-viewer article, or a separate page, as you wish.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:17, July 26, 2016 (UTC) I do think a list or a sub-cat of actual viewings (if we keep the articles) might be useful. One other thing to consider, is that the viewings were of historical and prehistorical events such as the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the K-T Extinction. I suggest that regardless of what we decide to do with them, we would want to create a separate "References to Historical Events in Turtledove's Work" article in parallel to "Figures". Something like the Treaty of Versailles could fit there rather than an article on it. ML4E (talk) 20:07, July 28, 2016 (UTC) My own inclination is to continue keep the separate articles but in a "Time-viewer Recordings" sub-cat. ML4E (talk) 20:07, July 28, 2016 (UTC) :I think this is a good plan of action. My initial plan for References to Historical Figures in Turtledove's Work was to include the Events as well, but then I sort of realized just how long the Figures page was probably going to be. :And I like the idea of creating a category for Time-Viewer Recordings. TR (talk) 21:09, July 28, 2016 (UTC) ::I think I like this idea. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:56, July 28, 2016 (UTC)